Success Story: How Tajudeen Adepetu Turned Hobby Into TV Program Production Empire

Success Story: How Tajudeen Adepetu Turned Hobby Into TV Program Production Empire

Another Success Story Of Turning Hobby To Mega Business

How Tajudeen Adepetu Turned His Love For Watching TV Into Multi Million Naira TV Program Production Empire.

Owner: Sound City, Televista, VillageSquareTV, BusinessTV, SPICE.TV

Everyone certainly has a hobby. This is what we do in our spare time to relax, and to unwind from the hustle and bustle of daily living. While some people will enjoy watching TV and following their favourite soaps, others may prefer engaging in in-door games such as chess, ludo, ayo, draft, monopoly, scabble, etc.

To many others, it may be to go out swimming; playing tennis, squash football, etc. And yet, to a lot more people, it could fall into reading, writing, singing, dramatizing, dancing, etc.

These are activities that take our minds away from work and stress, and therefore help our bodies to refresh and get fit.

Whether we are aware of it or not, we all have at least one hobby. But the interesting thing here is how some people have been able to successfully turn their hobbies into great businesses while the majority of people are confined in the 80% of the Pareto 20-80 percent Principle of how success and failure are shared in any area of life.

The implication of this principle is that 20% of the population will be able to successfully transform their hobbies to wealth, while the rest 80% will simply be happy to just enjoy theirs.

How Tajudeen’s Success Story Began

For Tajudeen Adepetu, his loved right from an early age was to watch Movies. However, it wasn’t going to be to just have fun with his hobby, but to be involved in bringing positive changes to it, a decision that took him from Pareto’s 80% to the 20% class some years later.

“I come from a family that loved sharing time to watch TV, and as we watched, we made comments, and I could easily see faults in the programs, and I usually point them. And as you would expect, there were family members who would challenge me to go and fix it since I believed I could do it better.

Set For Success: Tajudeen Went For Training

Then sometime later, my brother saw an advert for intake into the Nigerian Television College, Jos, and he said, ‘This is something that TJ will like to do.’ He said to me, ‘Ok TJ, you are always making so much noise about this thing, , so go and study it and let’s see what you can do,’” Tajudeen looking back to see how he traversed the path of turning his hobby to business.

After his training at the Television College, Tajudeen proceeded to the University of Jos to further get grounded in his chosen career as he completed his degree program in Theater Arts, and also took a number of short courses on firm production in some institutions.

Then it was time for him to start realizing his dream and rolling out what he had upstairs. He began his professional career in radio production, doing jingles, radio programming, and other audio related productions in Jos.

After two years in the radio industry, Tajudeen wasn’t yet fulfilled. He felt a deep urge to step out for greater challenges and excitement. According to him: “I found out that in as much as I loved radio, it was not as fulfilling for me as I would have loved, for something I have chosen as my life long career. So I just decided one day to pack up my bag and come to Lagos because I believe that Lagos was the place to be,”

That decision could only have been taken by someone who knew exactly what he was doing. Someone who was confident of what he could do, and was sure he would succeed even in the face of strong competition.

Tajudeen Had A Great Focus On Success

Tajudeen wasn’t coming to Lagos to pick up a waiting job, as a matter of fact, he hadn’t worked for anyone before as he had always produced his radio programs by himself. His coming to Lagos was to get into television program where he had noticed a lot of things he could do better. His exposure to quality programming as is done in the developed world, through watching and studying satellite TV, and reading international magazines, had given him loads of ideas on how to make television programs more exciting, educative, entertaining, and informative.

“I like studying what people are doing all over the world, and that is not difficult for me now to achieve as it was, say, ten years ago. And with the coming of the Internet, one can see virtually what everyone is doing all over the world. Basically, research is an important part of me. I like to know was is going on all over the world as it relates to my industry so that I can position myself and be able to deliver to my viewers quality programs,” Tajudeen revealing his source of ideas.

In Lagos, Tajudeen decided to move into drama production. According to him, drama was a great tool for him to convey his “ministry”, which was to expose the right and wrong ways of living, and then guide people to choose the right way.

He created his first TV program called Family Circle. And with the help of his cousin, brother, and his personal savings, he was able to get the funds he needed to complete work on the program, which became an immediate success.

Now His Success Story Was Coming Through

“Family Circle was immediately accepted. It was the very first drama production that AIT showed. They so much liked it that they showed it for about six times on the first day. It was really good, ad the viewers bought into it because they could see themselves in it. It was a huge success from the beginning, and that was how we got the motivation to continue producing it, even though our resources was very lean, for two years,” remembers Tajudeen excitedly.

From then on, Tajudeen never looked back. He went on rolling out one successful program to another, from sports to lifestyle, to music, and responses from his viewers were overwhelming.

His second drama production, Everyday People, was also an immediate hit, garnering loads of awards to show for it. from then on Tajudeen’s exceptional creativity and visionary were easily noticeable in the Nigerian television programming industry.

True to that was him being announced winner of M-net Producers award category in 1999; chosen by M-net International in 2000 to produce the Nigerian entry of that year’s “New Directions”; chosen as the Line Producer for Critical Assignment, a Guiness International sponsored film.

And on the home front, Tajudeen has been keeping television audience entertained, enlightened and educated through works which include Saints & Sinners, Scale of Justice, One Love, Blaze of Glory, Young Single and Free, Laugh Patterns, and Love Stories.

His Success Story Take Another Swing Upward

Currently, the prodigiously talented Tajudeen, whose purpose in his business is to improve the standard of television programming in Nigeria so that it can compete favourably with the rest of the, is on to a project that is shaping the face of television programming in Nigeria with his new baby, the Televista brand.

Millions of TV viewers in Lagos and other parts of the country have recently been thrilled by “Second Chance”, a soap opera in the Televista brand.

Apart from the Televista brand, Tajudeen has four more thematic channels, which include SOUND CITY VillagesquareTV, Business TV, and SPICE.TV, and which are making sure that Nigerians are constantly kept happy and their character influenced positively.

Success Comes By Providing Strong Value And Quality

The striking thing about his programs is their uniqueness and uncommon quality, so much that you may never believe they were produced locally. For instance, yours truly was among those who thought SOUND CITY was a South African production before I got confirmation that it was done here by Tajudeen Adepetu.

“SOUND CITY is the brand name of our music channel and a lot of people started thinking that the program was from South Africa because, I think, for the quality of its production, and I thank God for it. It is actually produced at our Lekki office, where we also do Business TV,” Confirms Tajudeen.

In fifteen years in business, veering into different areas of TV production, from drama to lifestyle, music, business, and movie, with great result to show for it, Tajudeen has shown that his enormous creativity and innovativeness do not have a limit of application.

“I am a producer. The important part of life is that I may not even like sports, but that does not mean I cannot or should not produce what sports lovers desire to watch. As a matter of fact, I could just produce films only about the lifestyle of sports personalities, instead of their live matches. Sports fans will also love to see the lifestyle of their heroes,” Tajudeen explains.

Explaining how he is able to expand this far, Tajudeen says, “You know, when you do something and you succeed in it, and people can associate with it, you of course develop it as time went goes on, and expand it. That is how we have gotten to where we could seek for and obtain a cable license and a satellite program distribution license from the National Broadcasting Commission.”

With those licenses Tajudeen’s company, Consolidated Media Associates Limited is permitted to create full branded channels for viewers, and be able to put them on any satellite platform where they could be seen worldwide. It is also allowed to own a cable TV, where viewers will have to subscribe to it.

Indeed, Tajudeen Adepetu, who won the SuccessDigest Enterprise Awards Outstanding Male Entrepreneur of the Year, 2008, has his ultimate goal to have his five brands being the most widely watched TV programs in Africa by 2010. And judging by his drive and what he has on ground, there is little doubt that he could achieve it.

Read Tajudeen Adepetu’s Keys to Success here

………………………..

Experts in business and technology, as well as daily users rate this software higher and above others. Click here to see why.